I'm having the same problem on my 3GS. Voice Control just starts randomly without me doing anything or touching the phone. It started yesterday when I noticed the phone was turning itself on just sitting on my desk. Tried resetting but no luck. Never had this problem before. I suspect it may be a hardware issue.

I am having the identical issue. I (and others) have witnessed my iPhone activate voice control, then randomly try to dial a contact, or play a song, WHILE SITTING ON A TABLE, untouched. Or on my desk, or my bedside table. Clearly an issue.

Want to upgrade to 3GS for speed and video but cannot and will not until this is resolved. Have been in this position since the feature was first announced because of spurious dialing concerns. Waited a few days rather than waiting in line which I did for the iPhone and 3G I bought...

Wonder how many others are equally concerned and stalled? Looking forward to a solution soon from some talented engineers who USUALLY listen and act.

Listen to my story, I deactivated voice dialing which was calling randomly and deleted all the songs on ipod, now when the blue screen comes I shout f* you looks like my iphone gets the message, but because of my bad language the home button doesn't work for a minute or so,and sometimes it gives me a screen shot, hope apple finds a solution that I don't shout so much.

I spent 1.5 frustrating hours on the phone with Apple National Support today. I referred numerous times to this thread but the ultimate solution they came up with was to push cancel when Voice Control came up. I then explained again that I had done that many times and it keeps coming up.

They ultimately told me I needed to exchange my unit. I'm not at all confident that is going to solve the problem.

The worst part is that during the process they told me to restore factory settings. I asked them if I would lose data and settings. They assured me I wouldn't if I did what they told me. I did what they told me and I still lost both data and settings.

Long story short: The Apple headphones with built-in remote are a marginal design at best. The remote is extremely sensitive to moisture and humidity. Moisture causes the play button to stick, which in turn randomly activates voice control on the iPhone. Only "fix" I know of is to wrap the remote and at least a half inch of the cord above and below it in plumber's tape. I've done this with my replacement set and have had good results (3 months of heavy use with no random voice control). Another option is to buy a 3rd party remote adapter from a company like Scoche but as you're already paying a premium for Apple products, it seems a bit ridiculous to pay even more to keep them from experiencing seizures.

Compounding and confusing this issue is the fact that the 1/8th inch input jack is very susceptible to dust and lint. Any intermittent connection from the contact used to transmit volume/play commands can cause random changes in volume, songs fast forwarding, and complete loss of remote function. The fix for this is to blow air into the female part of the jack and plug the phones back in. I've experienced this failure mode independent of the voice-control issue described above.

Bottom line is that Apple completely dropped the ball on testing this headphone design and has completely dropped the ball on remedying what is now obviously a widespread problem. And it's a problem that affects all the Apple products with the remote heaphones; iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch, 3rd Gen Shuffle, and the $75 Apple earbud headphones. There are myriad threads for every one of these products (on the Apple discussions boards and on Amazon.com) detailing the same type of failures. Apple has known about this for at least six months and has done absolutely nothing to remedy this aside from replacing headphones with the same defective design. Seriously, Apple, what does it take for you to act these days?

How do you wrap the remote in plumbers tape without rendering it unusable?

So then why were both the 1st tier and 2nd tier support guys I talked to completely oblivious to the problem? I don't think they were lying but I mentioned this thread and you are telling me there are others. Is there no communication within Apple support? They were prepared to pay return shipping on my exchange until I told them I was still within my return period at Best Buy. Why spend money on that to pretend a known problem doesn't exist. Not expecting answers to those questions of course.

How do you wrap the remote in plumbers tape without rendering it unusable?

Plumber's tape is a very thin, teflon material. The buttons and microphone will still respond just fine as long as you don't go way overboard on layering it.

So then why were both the 1st tier and 2nd tier support guys I talked to completely oblivious to the problem? I don't think they were lying but I mentioned this thread and you are telling me there are others. Is there no communication within Apple support?

It would appear that way. If you read through the threads on the Shuffle discussion board (and there are literally a dozen or more about problems with the headphones) you will occasionally hear someone report that the techs are well aware of the issue with the remote. But obviously this information is not being shared company-wide and there is no top-down directive on how to address this issue. In their defense, the techs I've dealt with on this issue (both on the phone and in the Apple stores) have been helpful and very willing to replace headphones for free. But they can't keep that up forever. I would hope a company as resourceful and innovative as Apple would find a way to make a replacement or retrofit with a better water seal. We're not asking this thing to withstand a nuclear bomb blast and realize it's somewhat disposable, but if you're going to put primary controls on it (and completely remove them from the device itself in the case of the shuffle) you had better make those controls reliable.

I have purchased plumbers tape and using my manual dexterity challenged fingers wrapped the remote and secured it using clear first aid tape.

It somewhat impairs the aestetics of the thing but if it will now work reliably I guess it is worth it. It also makes it more difficult to find the remote without looking at it. I used to be able to just feel for the raise in the cord but now that raise could be the tape too.

I bought the Apple ear buds and I've wrapped the controls with Glad Press'n seal as I think the plumber tape is a bit extreme. Hopefully that will prevent the problems I had with the original iPhone headphones I had that made the voice control trigger when I run.

MB_Vancouver wrote:I bought the Apple ear buds and I've wrapped the controls with Glad Press'n seal as I think the plumber tape is a bit extreme. Hopefully that will prevent the problems I had with the original iPhone headphones I had that made the voice control trigger when I run.

That also sounds like a workable solution; thanks for sharing. Just so people are clear on the type of tape I'm talking about, it's this very thin, white, teflon coated stuff shown in this link:

I had the same issue. The Apple Support guys were able to replicate my issue. The problem was with the screen. Slight pressure on the screen pops voice-control up. They changed it and it's good now. Just wanted to share this info.

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